500mhz iBook

I was thinking of getting a 500mhz ibook from ebay. What do you guys think? I don't need to do much. All I need to do is surf the web and type up some papers on it. Would this be a good laptop for those kinds of things? Is it slow while doing these things?
Also, will using it be hard, I am currently a windows user, the only other experience I have with apple computers are the iMacs at school.
Thanks

I just got one for 300 bucks on ebay. I'm happy with it cause i'll be using it for the same things as you. I just bumped up the ram on it to 384 instead of 128 and am upgrading the os to 10.3 and now its perfect so if you could find a 500 mhz model with a couple ad ons like what i mentioned you should be fine.

IMHO you *need* 512MB RAM and OS 10.2 (aka Jaguar) and you *want* OS 10.3 (aka Panther). No iBook (yet) came with / comes with 512MB built in. And OS 10.3 has "expose" which is a fabulous feature that helps you manage all your open windows.

If you're perfectly happy w/ it's configuration as paid for then OK. But if you have to spend $100 for airport card, $100+for memory, $125 for OS upgrade, want to replace the HD... then you might as well buy a newer computer.

Other than pure MHz, I think there is no practical difference between the guts of the 500 - 900 MHz (all G3 CPUs) models. But I think video memory went from 16MB to 32MB on the 800 MHz model, and Main ram went from 64 to 128 in the 700 MHz model.

$300 is pretty cheap. I bought a 900MHz iBook just two weeks ago for about $550 + $90 for memory upgrade + shipping at www.techrestore.com Came with a no questions asked refund policy and a 6 month guarantee.

Keep in mind that about Jan 16th the current iBook model will most likely be out of date too.